Theory vs. Reality

The theory of Common Core is admirable, but the reality is rife with problems.

As Peggy Noonan wrote in a blog post for the Wall Street Journal, “My conversations with several Core proponents over the past few weeks leave me with the sense they fell in love with an abstraction and gave barely a thought to implementation. But implementation—how a thing is done day by day in the real world—is everything.”

“…they fell in love with an abstraction and gave barely a thought to implementation.”

Peggy Noonan met with people on both sides of the issue, and concluded, “The irony is that Core proponents’ overall objective—to get schools teaching more necessary and important things, and to encourage intellectual coherence in what is taught—is not bad, but good. Why they thought the answer was federal, I mean national, and not local is beyond me.”